Two men getting their pants in a knot

This is the tale of how two completely clueless men went about acquiring the skills to buy 'nighties' to be put to use by the mother of one of the aforementioned men.

It was late on a Saturday evening. One guy was a local in Madras, the other had come all the way from Pune for work to the dosai-city. Plans had been made around noon to go and get a pint or two sometime in the evening, after their work for the day was done and discuss the events of the past two days - the conference they had to attend had quite a few interesting things to talk about. But, as the omnipresent, omnipotent and omni(insert other such praises) Murphy would have it, the mother of the non-local called up and apparently, her sources told her that Chennai has good 'cotton nighties' and that the son needs to buy them asap.

Of course, any plans of inebriated work talk was immediately scrapped and the local made a call back home to ask his mother as to where one might procure the famed 'cotton nighties.' After certain assurances, a trip was made to one long-standing textile shop outside of the shopping centres of Madras. Once there, the two men deftly asked one of the shop's employees as to where one might get to choose these 'nighties'. After hurriedly looking behind the two men for any female unit(s) accompanying them, the female employee hid her mouth with her hand to hide the rampant giggling and signaled 'first floor.'

Grudgingly climbing the steps up to the first floor, the two men had already got past the giggling, they knew they should expect more. The row of 'nighties' were displayed not on any aisle, but at a corner of the first floor which was overlooking the ground floor and the entrance to the shop. "Perfect," the local thought, "this is exactly what people entering the shop would want to see, two men grappling with a tape measure to buy 'nighties'."

And that was precisely what the two men did. Slowly walking past the bewildered looks meted out by other females buying these 'nighties' (oddly, one burkha-clad woman was buying them too, they must be really popular, these 'nighties'.) "Tape measure irukkuma?" asked the local to the (obviously!) female attender. She had exceptional strength to hide her giggles and hand out a tape measure to the poker-faced chap from Pune. Immediately, the chap held out a certain 'nightie' for the local to measure. And measure, he did, from one seam of the shoulder to the other. "19 inches," he said to the other guy. "Too much, I think," said the Pune guy. The local, it would suffice to say, was quite convinced that he should not ask the other guy how he came to that particular conclusion.

Repeated and rather frantic calls were made back to the mother unit in Pune in order to avoid any mix-up. "What can the length be?" "Yes, mother, I am actually at the store." "Yes, the employee assures me that it's cotton." "What do you mean it has to be thick? How would I know what is thick and thin in a 'nightie'?" "Yes, I will attend that wedding with you. Who's wedding is it again?"

After a good 15 minutes of varying measurements and repeated assurances by the employee that the chosen 'nightie' was "pure cotton saar," the required number was bought and taken delivery of. Once the 'nighties' went into the cover though, the two men were overcome with both pride and a strange sense of achievement. Walking out of the store, they quietly sniggered at the men carrying covers and waiting outside the store, some with and some without a kid in their hand, for their better halves to complete their shopping.

If there is something called an old wives' tale, surely, there must be something called Tales of valiant men who spent a good part of their married life waiting outside a store for their wives.

Dear irrational person

Sometimes, it's just easy to write something scathing and hurtful about you. I could do it in a jiffy and it'd hurt you till your last breath. But what I want you to know is that there are times when I will control myself. Not for your sake mind you. You usually flatter yourself like that.

What I do is always dependent on what I want to do and never on you. Let's get that straight. I do not, and I am making this abundantly clear seeing how telling you in your face has no effect, give a flying fuck for your irrationality. I loathe it. I look down upon it. I pity you for being in such a deluded state. But I will never ask you to see things the way I see it. Not only would that go against everything I stand for, that'd only confuse the hell out of you and your puny little brain that is insanely blinded by all that you assume, irrationally of course.

Whilst just reading this, you're going to be fuming your top off, I know that much. But you should know, this is a very restrained attack - yes, this is an attack alright - and that there is a lot more from where this comes from. It is not that a fuller attack would affect you more, I am not a very hurtful person in general. I usually don't even make an attempt to know someone enough to let them get on my nerves. 

And I should thank you for reiterating my belief in the general prevalence of absolute cock and bull irrationality that made me shut myself down to people in the first place. You are everything that turned me into a cynic a few years ago. You are everything I detest in this world. And now, when people ask me why I am the way I am, I have a living example to quote. And warn about. I should thank you for that.

When I goofed up..

A couple of days ago, I got a call any journalist - budding or established - dreads. The Mr.Journo-your-story-is-factually-wrong call.

It was all a bit heady to be frank. I did the same old boring kind of a story that I've been doing for a while now. Only this time, I had a very very tight deadline. 2 days to fix up an appointment, research for the interview, conduct the interview, transcribe and then write the story. This is a process I do for every story, but my usual deadlines are more like 2-3 stories every 10 days, which is insanely relaxed. So when the moment I finished this particular story, I felt quite relieved to have managed to pull off the deadline.

The usual process then followed. Boss edits the story and makes a pdf out of it, sends it to me for final checking and I gave the go ahead. Issue came out and I mailed a copy of it to the interviewees. A full 10 days later, the interviewee makes the call. Long story short, he yelled at me for having misquoted him and claiming that his company manufactured the product that his competitors do. I told him I'll check into it while telling myself that it was too big a gaffe to be true.

I was wrong. When I went heard the recording again, it became quite obvious. He had said "We manufacture all lamps for the xyz car..". I assumed that when he said "all", he meant every single lamp that the car might have, while he had implied that they manufacture only all the lamps to the front of the car, head lamps, indicators and fog lamps.While one could argue that he must have been clearer, the onus really lies on the journo to quell any ambiguity in the interviewee's statement.

I told my boss that it was my mistake. He didn't seem to care. His only concern was that a retraction is now to be published and that is never a good thing.

TL;DR - I made a mistake, interviewee pointed it out to me and I apologise.

Life goes on...

Ever since I got my Sociology books, I've been wanting to sit for an entire day and let my brain be confused to the hilt. As I found out after a recent visit to the library, all it took was 2 hours and 23 pages of this book - Deconstructing Durkheim by Jennifer M Lehmann.

It's a relatively small book, just over 200 pages. But the weight of its content goes, at present, well and truly over my head. There are a few concepts that I have to invest myself in before I get back to that book. And here's where I miss being in a class. If I were in a class, doing the same course, I'd have other peoples' minds at my disposal. A few questions here or there and a few opinions then and now surely got the pot stirring in my Journalism class and I don't see how it'd have been different here.

I guess I could just wait for the optional lectures to begin.

Rationale singularity

I miss being a student. It's barely a year since I last was a student and I miss that feeling of having something to occupy the mind with. While it is true that I love to let my mind wander free, pick up something strange and follow a train of thought, it was easier to do this when I was a student. Intriguing things intrigued me and there just seemed to be a lot more things to be intrigued about back then.

Work is good for me. I know I can put in more effort and do a much better job of what I am currently doing, but I don't want to. It'd easily let my boss typify me into a role I've been forced to undertake due to circumstances in office. As all those management books seem to suggest, success in work is all about grabbing certain opportunities and letting go of some. I'm letting go of this because I've seen (in the form of my colleagues) where this will eventually lead me and I don't quite like that scenario. So as of now, I'm happy just ambling along, going with the flow, not paddling on my own and letting the current take me.

For the past 8 months or so, since I've started on this job, a typical Sunday evening for me is usually spent wondering about the frantic Sunday evenings I spent whilst in J school. It was either finishing assignments in a hurry or making pages or attempting to brainstorm with Rachit when originally watching Scrubs or going into one of our typically long drawn conversations. I miss those Sundays badly.

It's not that I was a bright student. I was the opposite of every fibre of that word. I was average while in school. A tad above average in college and for reasons still incomprehensible, a bit good even, when in J school. I don't know when my habit of looking things up happened, but it just did. I recently had quite a long discussion about Entropy with my brother (basically a geek on physics per se) and I could see how surprised and even marginally proud he was when he realised that I knew a bit about the concept.

My lack of math skills have left me in deep shit at times. That has in some way, acted as an impediment for me to learn Physics, which is, ironically, my favourite of sciences. As I'm sure everybody knows, math and physics speak a common language. Understanding one is necessary to fully understand the other. I could never wrap my head around even the simplest of math. But understanding some concepts of physics in a non-academic way doesn't need math, like the concepts of aerodynamics or waves or light or thermodynamics or entropy.

Anyway, I digress. I need something to keep my mind active. Student life and probably the people it brought along did that for me until a year ago. I want that back. Not a wishful time machine to rewind to that exact phase or a Groundhog Day scenario, but even a shade of that phase would do.

Something to keep my mind engaged on something, or someone on someone.